Preparing your garden for winter – tips from Geilston Garden

Seasonality, like a red-breasted robin, goes hand-in-hand with the art of gardening. As the season changes so do the endeavours of the gardener.

There are lots of winter jobs that must be done to prepare the garden for the following year, and many are the same for any garden. So, some of you with gardens may already be tackling some of these winter garden tasks:

• Final going over of herbaceous beds, then applying a winter mulch
• General mulching and preparing the soil for next year
• Lifting and storing dahlia tubers over winter
• Protecting tender plants with fleece or straw
• Planting trees – whips and bare-rooted
• Planting any bare-rooted plants
• Planting spring bulbs
• Surveying trees and carrying out any tree surgery
• Final leaf clearance
• Turning compost and making leaf mould
• General winter pruning
• Ordering seed for spring
• Maintaining and servicing tools and machinery

But at Geilston Garden, we have a few extra jobs that need to be tackled:

• Completing the major task of over a mile of hedge cutting by hand-held hedge cutters
• Cutting back, shredding and composting the remains of over 100 varieties of vegetables and cut flowers grown on site from seed for educational and aesthetic purposes
• Lifting over 150 dahlia tubers and hundreds of gladioli corms and storing them in a frost-free place for planting out next season

• Removing the top nets from fruit cages to prevent the cage structures being damaged by heavy snowfall
• Pruning apple trees in the orchard, the fan-trained cooking apples in the walled garden and the fruit bushes in the kitchen garden – we like to have this completed by the end of January
• Planting over 1,000 bulbs – tulips, camassias, lilies and erythroniums – will ensure a vibrant spring display to lift all our spirits
• Resurfacing and upgrading the paths and the car park with gravel to help cope with the increasing visitor numbers and the challenging wet climate at Geilston
• Removing old leaves from hellebores to allow the flowers to take centre stage into early spring

Additionally, one of the Geilston team’s aims this winter is for each of our active garden volunteers to plant a tree, which will further strengthen the bond between people, plants and the landscape. So our woodland garden will be rejuvenated with acers, sorbus, betula, eucryphia and a stunning liquidambar. Planting Scottish heritage apple trees will also extend the range of varieties in the orchard.

So, even though the days are shorter and the weather might mean you can’t get out in the garden as much as you would normally, there’s still lots to do – and it’s great for your wellbeing.